Leon de Haas Situations & Experiences Essays on Philosophical Practice
Colofon Title: Situations and Experiences. Essays on Philosophical Practice Author: Leon de Haas leon@platopraktijk.nl Publisher: PlatoPraktijk, Roermond, The Netherlands www.platopraktijk.nl Published as a digital book. Illustration cover: Sanne Roermond, April 2013 2013 PlatoPraktijk, Roermond, The Netherlands All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. NUR 730 ISBN 978-94-90208-03-5 i
Preface This book contains six essays on philosophical practice. They all have been written in 2011 and 2012, and published elsewhere, in an anthology or a journal. They express my thoughts about philosophical practice at the time. The three essays in chapters 2, 3 and 4 have also been published together as an e-book: Dialogical Encounters. Three Essays on Philosophical Coaching, Roermond: 2011, ISBN 978-94-90208-00-4. All the essays in this book, I wouldn t have written them without the request and the encouragement of the editors of the books and journals in which they were published originally. I want to mention here, Young E, Rhee, Jagadish Patgiri, and Jeanette Bresson Ladegaard Knox. Leon de Haas Roermond, The Netherlands March 29, 2013 ii
1 A Personal History in Philosophical Practice Published in: Philosophical Practice. 5 Questions, Edited by Jeanette Bresson Ladegaard Knox and Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen Friis, Automatic Press / VIP 2013. Answering the five questions of this anthology, I tell about my history with the practical aspect of philosophy since the 1960 s. Within in the context of the Marxist and neo-marxist revival in those years, the practical was, first of all, social and political. For me, philosophical practice was the philosopher s emancipatory participation in the community (the polis ) that he was part of. In the 1980 s, the political intentions of the philosophical practice got lost; the practice resembled more the therapeutic care for mentally confused or puzzling individuals. By doing so, philosophical practice lost its connection to the promises of Modern philosophy. Now, again, the question is how we can develop philosophical practice as an emancipatory power in the polis. Introduction 1. Praxis in 20th century philosophy; the sixties Question 1. Why were you initially drawn to Philosophical Practice? In 1969, I started studying at the University of Amsterdam. In the preceding years, the streets of Amsterdam were, like elsewhere in European and American cities, the public stage of new impulses of personally engaged and autonomous, non-institutional politics. A typical Amsterdam phenomenon was the Provo s, who joined immediate concrete experiments of freedom (like communes, alternatives to psychiatry, free public bikes, biological food shops) and political actions (like humorous anticigarettes-industry ceremonies in the streets, and playful participation in the 3
Amsterdam city government). In that year, 1969, students and critical scientific personnel occupied the management center of the University of Amsterdam. The university was carried away in a process of politicization. Professors lost their natural authority, like science and philosophy lost their intrinsic values of truth. Scientific and philosophical truth became a result of democratic discussion; social relevance became a major criterion for initiating and valuing academic research and education. In Amsterdam, a group of students in philosophy and social sciences had founded the Critical University. Among them was Pim Fortuijn, who was, some decennia later, to become the notorious populist politician. He became the victim of a political murder in 2002. The participants in the Critical University rediscovered what, in those years, was rediscovered in the critical freedom movements all over the world, i.e., Marx and the neo-marxist philosophies. The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory (like Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Marcuse) inspired to read Freud and the neo-freudians (e.g., Reich and Fromm) as well. The philosophical faculty at the University of Amsterdam was the stage of conflicting schools. There were several demarcation lines. There was the demarcation between the students of the a-political analytical philosophy and the students of social and political engaged continental philosophies. And there was the demarcation line between the political philosophers (the students of Marxism and Critical Theory) and personalism (followers of Asian gurus, and students of Jasper s existentialism, Jung s psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology, etc.). I did not exclude any of those schools, but, being a boy of the streets of Amsterdam, the fire of praxis had lighted me. To me, it was not possible to do philosophy without being aware of Marx 11th thesis on Feuerbach: Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. But how could a philosopher possibly change the world as a philosopher? Together with four fellow students, I formed The Philosophers Collective. We were looking for ways to practice philosophy in society. Three of us left the university to participate as political filmmakers in Het Amsterdams Stadsjournaal, a political film collective. I missed the philosophical aspect of their decision, and wandered how I could participate in social activities as a philosopher. I found a solution by blending 4
social action research in a community development project, and a critical study of the epistemological and social-cultural aspects of both the community development and the action research. So, as a member of the action research team, I had two roles, as a participating social researcher, and as a critical philosophical thinker. And I hoped that the unity of the two roles would be fruitful for both the social research and philosophy. What can I say about it now, in 2011? That my intentions were nice and sympathetic, but that my experience as a philosopher was young and immature. In the 1980 s, the impetus of the personal and social emancipation movement extinguished. The practice of personal and social emancipation lost its spontaneous and self-organizational drives and space. It got encased by repressive tolerance (Herbert Marcuse) of dominant institutional and economic powers, and by the restoration of old politics. Politics, which had been the enthusiasm of emancipation and liberation of everyday life for a decade, withdrew from the houses and streets, and became the toy of institutionalized politicians again. Likewise, emancipatory change of personal and public life became more than ever the specialism of psychological and sociological change-professionals. This loss of politics in everyday life - i.e., this loss of self-organized civil governance in the public sphere of the polis - stroked the university, the neighborhoods, the companies, the health institutions, etc. And philosophy lost its sense of praxis. We recognize this loss in Gerd Achenbach s initiative, in 1981, to start a philosophical practice. Even though he was critical about the psychological models of psychotherapy, he modeled his philosophical practice to the non-political, therapeutic relation between counselor and client. It was only in 2008, at the 9th International Conference on Philosophical Practice, that the German philosopher and philosophical practitioner Thomas Polednitschek reminded us of the ancient political roots of philosophical practice. (Polednitschek 2009) In the meantime, since 1980, I experimented with various forms of philosophical practice. I, too, lost the political aspect, but gained more and more experience in both finding and knowing the edges of Modern philosophy, and developing ways of philosophical interventions in social situations. In the eighties, I worked as an organization consultant and as a meditation teacher. As a freelance researcher at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, I found 5
my end of (academic) philosophy. My studies of the works of Georges Bataille, Joseph Beuys and John Cage led me to the edge of philosophy as reasoning and text (De Haas 1988; De Haas 2011d), and forced me to leave desk philosophy behind. Praxis still was the magic word... but what is philosophical praxis? In the 90ties, I worked as an organization and management consultant, trying to embed my philosopher s perspective and skills in my consultancy job. In the years 2000, through some personal crises, I rediscovered the value of philosophy, thanks to the ongoing study of Wittgenstein s work (De Haas 2008). I knew three things better than ever: philosophy is an encounter in real life situations, it is a dialogue, and it has no language of its own. Besides, the participating philosopher acts from and in his engagement in the community that he is part of. 2. Dialogical encounters in the polis Question 2. What does your work reveal about Philosophical Practice that other related academic fields typically fail to appreciate? As an academic philosopher - i.e., I studied philosophy at a European university and I philosophize in the tradition of the ancient Greek schools of philosophy (*) - I know from experience both the challenges and the limitations of this tradition. (*) Besides, I am influenced by Eastern philosophy as well, as I learned it in the practice of sitting Zen meditation and moving T ai chi meditation. As a part of these studies, I ve read Buddhist and Taoist texts. The perspective spot of this knowledge is given by the above-mentioned socialpolitical context, by the philosophical struggle that is part of my personal life, and by my philosophical business. Western philosophical practice in the academic field lacks the practice of real life encounter and dialogue. Nietzsche bet his own life and discussed the loss (and the denial) of real life in philosophical reasoning, but he himself got stuck in his satirical attacks on Western philosophy and Christian culture, and in his literary dreaming about the Übermensch (man who has overcome himself). Marx declared the end of theoretical, interpreting philosophy and the beginning of political philosophy that would change the world, but his declaration stuck in the study rooms of the British Museum, in the totalitarian character of his 6
philosophy (*), and in the practice of fundamentalist politics. (*) Levinas warnings against totalitarian thinking (Levinas 1951) also apply to Marxian thinking; Marx was an ontologist. Husserl was aware of the otherness of reality in relation to reasoning and developed the attitude and method of epochè, but only to be better capable of understanding the conceptually grabbed essence of reality. So, for philosophy becoming a personal and social practice, these innovators in Modern philosophy didn t offer a way out of its rational and theoretical blind alleys. Hadot s and Foucault s rediscovery of philosophy as an art of living (Hadot 1995; Foucault 1983) helped to revalue ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, but not to develop philosophy as a dialogical encounter. More hopeful perspectives came from Wittgenstein, Buber and Levinas. Wittgenstein divided his real life off his philosophical investigations; by unraveling the philosophers thinking knots and pitfalls, he opened (moral) thinking in and from situations of real life (De Haas 2008). Buber did not speak about reality and human existence, but his philosophy was a speaking with concrete fellow human beings (Buber 1995). Levinas carried on this encountering philosophy (Levinas 1980). I began to understand philosophical practice primarily as the always concrete, open and unique encounter of the philosophizing person with his situations, with his fellow human beings, and with himself. Then, from here, the supporting interventional relation with support asking people is nothing more and nothing less than a specific occurring of a human encounter with philosophical ambition. This is crucial in the comparison of philosophical practice with so-called related disciplines like psychotherapy, counseling and consultancy. In general, these practices work on account of psychological and anthropological generalizations and reductions. The guest is a client, and the client is a case of generalized, pre-conceived clinical pictures and personality schemes. There, the clinical conversation is the gathering of information in order to apply the general knowledge. In those practices no encounter happens (they are meetings) and no dialogue is going on (they are conversations). Philosophical practice, as I see and do it, is a unique encounter between two unique, in-reducible persons. 7
Counseling, as understood and practiced in the spirit of humanistic psychology (like Carl Roger s), is an exception to the generalizing and reductive therapies. The humanistic counselor s attitude is open towards the client; his efforts are aimed at helping the client telling his or her own unique story and understanding himself not through pre-conceived models. As to the art of non-reductive questioning, philosophical practitioners can learn a lot from humanistic counselors. But then, philosophical practice steps across the boundaries of counseling. We, philosophical practitioners, are not solving problems, and we are not just affirming and supporting the client s own processes of story telling and understanding; we challenge our guest to investigate his thinking thoroughly and critically, and to take his responsibility for the situations he is part of in his life. This responsibility is to be seen both moral and political. Stephen Toulmin characterized the socalled 'clinical' sciences as situational and non-reductive (Toulmin 2003). However, the bureaucratic and economical pressure to prove the truth of clinical interventions through statistical generalization undermines the open clinical attitude. In the Netherlands, the application of diagnosistreatment-combinations subverts the openness of the interventional encounters. Here we also meet second-hand psychologies and philosophies. I mean all those self-declared counselors, coaches and consultants, who know the truth about their clients and use all kinds of means and rituals to heal them. I call them second-hand, because they borrow understandings and strategies from philosophy and psychology, to reshape them to indisputable truths in their ideologies of The Self and The Spiritual. They forget to adopt the self-critical and skeptical attitude of serious psychologists and philosophers. Unfortunately, there are such spiritual moonlighters who call themselves philosophical practitioner. Seen from the selfcriticism of Modern philosophy, many a philosophical practice fall back on precritical metaphysics. The poverty of those practices comes to light, when practitioners take refuge in cognitive therapy or spiritual counseling. Philosophy practiced as cognitive therapy reduces philosophy and the human mind to cognition and rational reasoning, and the spiritual counselor leaves any philosophical criticism and skepticism for a cosmological ontology of The Self. 8
Philosophical practice, seen as an open, dialogical encounter, keeps free from such generalizations and reductions. For most of the guests in my practice this is exactly the reason to visit a philosopher. But that is not all. It is not just the relation between philosopher and guest. It is also the relation between the guest and his or her situations of life. In the psychologically defined interventions, the client is indeed defined - to his individual feeling, thinking and behaving, and sometimes to his system, being the network of individual relations. As Polednitschek demonstrated, the client is taken as a homo psychologicus and economicus and not considered a homo politicus. In 2008, in Europe, we live in an age of post-bourgeois resignation. Therefore, in my opinion, a philosophical practice that wants to resist Western Europe s democratic melancholy (Bruckner), must, as a political philosophy, be the critical theory of a society in which the citizen s political I has been relieved by the de-politicized individual. This de-politicized individual is the homo economicus of our postmodern times, for whom the rationality of business economics is the exclusive criterion of his thinking and acting. And he is the homo psychologicus, whose reflexive individualism makes him the prisoner of his own subjectivity. (Polednitschek 2009) The homo psychologicus is an object of diagnosis and treatment, whereas the citoyen is a subject who takes responsibility for his being part of the situations he is living. Polednitschek states, that the philosophical practitioner is not - i.e., should not want to be - a counselor (in German: Berater), but a citoyen who encounters a fellow citoyen. Polednitschek refers to the political subject of the Enlightenment and the bourgeois and proletarian Revolutions. That is, to the era between the late 18th and the early 20th centuries. The framework of his political philosophy is the negative dialectics of Adorno and Horkheimer (Adorno 1970; Horkheimer 1971). There is some resentment towards the so-called Post-Modern times in his thinking. In my opinion, it is more realistic and fruitful, to understand our time as an era of the development of a global network society. The political subject that Polednitschek wants to revive was related to the political and economic institutions of the kingdoms and democracies of rising and flourishing capitalism. Those abstract institutions - both the falling and the arising - had some 9
substantive grip on the whole of society. Nowadays, they are losing their grips more and more. In the niches and the fallow fields of the globalizing world, concrete networks of human relations are germinating, growing and developing. In the Enlightenment, the citoyen was a free person in an open society, where freedom was the participation in the institutions, and the institutions defined the openness. Nowadays, the center of his polis is not the institution, but the situations, i.e., situations with open horizons. Through the horizons, situations are linked - situations, which are always concrete situations of concrete persons. The contemporary citizen s situation is not defined; it has no closed borders, no fixed boundaries. His ordinary life is a network of situations, and by that, of changing connections and interactions. A situation is being here and now, within the horizons here and now. As time is changing, situations are changing in space - and so are the people we are meeting and encountering. A situation is defined, while the horizons are not. The situation is limited, while the perspectives are infinite. Present-day situations are open; we are living an open society. The horizon is a vague distance from where impulses and powers are influencing us, but where we suspect new possibilities, too. When with the polis we mean our non-institutional community, and with politics the communication and decisionmaking about the quality and conditions of our living-together, then, the contemporary polis is our own concrete set of situations of the global network society, and politics the practice of thinking and choosing in the currents of our life, in communication with the others with whom we share our situations. The state and market institutions are abstract processes and powers, interfering into our situations, and often dominating. It is to us, how we experience, value and treat these abstract powers. Why shouldn t we turn round our perspectives from the abstract, institutional point-of-view to our concrete situational network-positions? Is the first decade of the 21st century not particularly the playground of germinating, growing and developing practices and connections of such a global network of situated citizens? And if philosophical practice is the practice of concrete dialogical encounters - as I contend in the slipstreams of Wittgenstein, Buber and Levinas -, why shouldn t we consider this practice to be the way we have to think in this becoming polis-network or network-polis? And 10
why should we - be it cynically or agreeing - comment these developments from the outside (as many free philosophers do at the university and in the media), and not participate dialogically in the community that we are part of? 3. The philosopher as a living being and as a citoyen Question 3. What, if any, practical and/or social-political obligations follow from understanding philosophy from the point of view of Philosophical Practice? The concept of practice in philosophical practice is complicated. As I have stipulated above, some currents of Modern philosophy declared its end, and tried to find a way out of its blind alleys. The blind alleys were revealed where the philosophers reasoning had drifted away from the concrete living bodies and situations, from real life (as noticed by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, Bergson), and where their language had produced its own autistic problems (as criticized by Marx, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Levinas). The way out of the self-imprisonment of philosophy was practice. But what is practice in a philosophical sense? For Marx, it was the opposite of interpreting the world, so, changing the human world - socially, economically, politically. For Nietzsche, it was the opposite of reasoning life to death, so, living a life - in a distinguished and sovereign way. For Achenbach, it was the opposite of theorizing in academic rooms, so, consulting clients in consulting rooms next door to the family doctor and the psychotherapist. Achenbach s concept of philosophical practice is restricted. As indicated above, his practice has been developed in the a- political context of the 1980 s and 1990 s. Where his method and language is that of philosophy (particularly German philosophy), his situational and conversational model is that of the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic conversations. Here, the philosopher is acting in the social and economic field of psychotherapists and counselors. His guest is a client with psychological problems. Calling these problems existential does not change the fact that the client is considered a homo psychologicus, i.e., someone with interpreting and healing thoughts about his feelings, thoughts, and behavior. Putting himself and his guest into such an individual hermeneutic situation, he is treating himself as a counselor (Berater) and his guest as a client. Here, philosophizing is primar- 11
ily and just a hermeneutic conversation and not an encounter in the full sense of this word. What is a philosophical encounter? Is it a coincidence, that three non-conformist Jewish philosophers in the philosophical traditions of Athens were able to leave the autistic theorizing and rationalizing of Modern philosophy to find praxis? Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas and Ludwig Wittgenstein. To them, the core of philosophy was the real life human encounter. Although Wittgenstein considered real life to be outside of philosophy. He restricted philosophical activity to the critical investigation of the philosophers dead alleys and thinking knots. See De Haas 2008. Philosophical text was just there to teach themselves and others about philosophical encounters. Philosophical practice, as we do it nowadays in the economic form of small businesses, is a trial to realize this encountering philosophy in real life social situations with fellow citizens. How can we practice philosophical encounters in the defined and defining contexts of everyday life, community life and business life? What does this mean for philosophy? In this approach, we understand the contemporary citoyen as a human being who considers himself situated in concrete real life networks, and who takes the responsibility for his being part of the situations he is living. When the future of philosophy is practicing real life encounters between citoyens, in social and economic situations, what, then, are the challenges? First, the philosopher is not a therapist, counselor or consultant. He or she is a real Socrates (not Nelson's conversation facilitator (see De Haas 2011a), nor the quasi- Platonic digger of hidden Ideas). ( Plato s philosophy resembles more the open philosophy of Levinas than the so-called theory of Ideas as has been thought by Christian users of Plato s writings. Plato s notion of eidos and idea is closer to Buber s encounter and Levinas countenance than to the ontological Proper World ( Hinterwelt, as Nietzsche called it) of conceptual Ideas. ) On the contrary, he is a citizen who is willing to encounter his fellow human beings and enters into dialogues. Second, the philosopher is a public challenger. Not like Russell, Sartre, Foucault, Chomsky or Bernard-Henri Lévy, who are 12
prophets, relating to the old time political institutions. The encountering philosopher is not a prophet; on the contrary, he initiates dialogues and takes the responsibility for the situations he is part of. In my view, philosophical practice is the consequence and promise of Modern philosophy, i.e., of those currents of Modern philosophy that are conscious of the pitfalls of theorizing philosophy and are searching for philosophical ways of human encounters. What are philosophical ways of human encounters? Actually, this is a pleonasm. As Buber and Levinas showed, in an encounter - which is not a mere meeting - two human beings open to each other and to themselves. They accept the other human being as an other being, not reduced, and not reducible. In a dialogue - which is not a mere conversation - they share and explore the endless landscapes that they are and that they inhabit... without the will to reduce their experiences to concepts and conceptions. An encountering philosopher is someone who musters up the courage to challenge all cognitive and institutional reductions that occupy the situations that he and his guest are focused on in their encounter. And they do this not just in the text of their dialogue, but particularly in the practice of their lives, in their everyday situations and encounters. This is the philosopher s challenge, in his own life. And in his caring encounters with those who come to visit his place, he teaches his guest to philosophize in this sense, in this perspective. And his place is not just and not primarily his consulting room; it is every situation in the landscape of his life - where another human being is longing for an encounter in his or her struggle for life. It s a philosopher s challenge to be present in those situations in his community - and to initiate that kind of dialogues. 4. About the justification of philosophical practice Question 4. What do you see as the most interesting criticism against your own position in Philosophical Practice? In discussions about my practice, there are two issues: justification and the political. 13
In the business world where I try to market my practice, clients ask me if I can guarantee the quality of my interventions. They are used to asking for the results of the services they buy from consultants and coaches. I think, they are right; they have to be curious about the results of the services that they pay for. Besides, private customers ask if my services will be paid back by the health insurer. I think it a shortage of philosophical practice that we hardly are able to give more than vague hope of success to our guests. So far we have neglected the issue of the justification of our practice. In the new Indian journal of philosophy, Manavayatan, I tried to start this discussion (De Haas 2011c). Another criticism against my position in philosophical practice came from Thomas Polednitschek and was related to the political aspect of it. As I discussed above, I take this criticism very seriously. Again and again I try to understand the political aspects of the encounters with my guests, and I am experimenting with practical consequences of this understanding. 5. Re-inventing philosophical practice Question 5. With respect to present and future inquiry, how can the most important problems concerning Philosophical Practice be identified and explored? In short, I can summarize the conclusions of this essay in the following questions, which are perspectives for inquiries and dialogues. Is it - in relation to the Modern history of Western philosophy - still justifiable to practice philosophy as a primarily rational and conceptual discipline instead of a real and open encounter of human beings? What does it practically mean for philosophical practice to be a situated encounter between in-reducible human beings? What does it practically mean for philosophical encounters to be an encounter in open situations, in which the people in dialogue are responsible members of the social networks that they are part of? How can we justify our practice without reductive objectifications and generalizations, i.e., doing justice to the open, notreducing and in-reducible character of philosophy and philosophical practice? 14
Asking, researching and discussing these questions, is only possible as an aspect of the everyday practice as philosophizing human beings and practitioners. Doing this, we will be re-inventing philosophical practice in the footprints of the great philosophers of our time, and, at the same time, finding contemporary forms for the ageold philosophical traditions. If polis stands for the significant community that we are part of; and if significant means: to make choices about the quality of our everyday lives; and if we consider choosing to be our own matter in our social relations and situations - then we are talking about the philosopher s political role. I mean, it is the practice of freedom. We turn meetings into encounters, conversations into dialogues. And we brake reducing and reduced conditions open to situations with perspective-full horizons. In whatever social situation, commercial or not. This implies, that we leave behind totalitarian and activist political philosophy (Marx, Sartre, etc.), as well as the shopkeeper and counselor mentality of philosophical practice. On principle, there is no difference between paid and not paid philosophical encounter. It is not a shame that a philosopher wants to earn his money with philosophical encounters. On the other hand, the content of the philosophical service cannot be dependent on the payment; it is always a real and heartfelt human encounter. 15
2 Encounters and Dialogues Styles and Levels of Communication in Philosophical Practice This essay is a revised version of the key note speech I gave at the 3rd International Conference on Humanities Therapy in Chuncheon, South-Korea, at July 7, 2011. The conference HT2011 was organized by the HK Research Team for Humanities Therapy at the Humanities Institute of the Kangwon National University in Chuncheon, Republic Korea. A slightly revised version of this essay has been published in the Journal of Humanities Therapy, Vol. 2, December 2011, a publication of the Humanities Institute. The world of philosophical practice is a patchwork of partly vague, partly not reducible styles and methods. We badly lack a common language regarding the quality of philosophical practice. The author contributes to the professional discussion of philosophical practice by being explicit about his approach. He characterizes his phenomenologically inspired way of philosophical practice as 'dialogical encounter'. He describes some examples from his coaching practice. In the last part of the essay, he makes a distinction between encountering and procedural practices by describing two events. Keywords: Philosophy, Philosophical practice, Dialogue, Dialogical encounter, Phenomenology, Counseling, Coaching. Abstract 1.! Introduction: my philosophical background In Western philosophy, and as far as I know it is the same in Eastern philosophy, there is not just one philosophy. For centuries, philosophers disagree about both the object of philosophical thought and the language and methods of philosophical thinking. So, I am aware of the fact, that it is useless to claim the one and only true 16
philosophy. Yet, each of us is certain about the line of philosophy he or she is following. So, to be clear, let me be explicit about my philosophical roots. Being born and raised in white European families in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, my philosophical roots are definitively European. I ve got a thorough philosophical education at the University of Amsterdam. I have studied all schools in Western philosophy. At the University of Amsterdam, I even got my first introduction to Eastern philosophy; my teacher, professor O.D. Duintjer, started his lectures on metaphysics with tai chi ch uan exercises, i.e., with philosophical practice in a Taoist tradition. After having graduated from this university, I became a teacher in philosophy. At the same time, I started practicing Zen or Chán Buddhist meditation in Amsterdam. Although I was a qualified philosopher then, it was just this experience of practicing Zazen or zuòchán that taught me the meaning of philosophy. To be short, I learned that philosophy is a matter of open-minded, unconditional and caring attention and presence. And this insight is not theory; it is daily practice in ordinary life. As the Japanese-American Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said, Zen mind is beginner s mind (Suzuki 1980); in the same sense I would say, philosopher s mind is beginner s mind. It is not a fixed state; it is to be created every day anew. At the same time, I realized, that the history of European philosophy had, with Edmund Husserl and Ludwig Wittgenstein, two points of understanding that cannot be neglected, when we are in good faith. The first point of no return is Husserl s phenomenology. Here, philosophy starts with giving up our opinions, beliefs and judgments, so that we can meet the world as she is, i.e., so that she can appear in our experience as she is without our interpretations. Being open like this, we can receive the world, the other beings, the other person, and only then try to understand. The second point of no return in European philosophy is Wittgenstein s philosophical investigations. Here, philosophy also gives up her pre-conceived interpretations, and opens herself to listen to the meanings our situations of life utter themselves. But now, with Wittgenstein, philosophy is not finding a true language to express the true essence of the phenomenon, i.e., of the world and our existence. No, here we end up at a philosophy of situations, a situational philosophy. Encountering this current situation, here now, is to give up our pre-conceived ideas of it, and to let mean- 17
ing and sense arise from our encounter. The way to let the meaning and sense of this situation arise from our encounter is our dialogue. An inner dialogue of each of us, and a shared dialogue between us. Let us look more closely at these two concepts, dialogue and encounter. (1)! Dialogue There is a misunderstanding concerning the meaning of the word dialogue. Often, it is translated by a conversation between two people. The root of this misunderstanding is a wrong translation of the prefix dia in dialogue. Dialogue is an ancient Greek word, used by Plato to indicate Socrates conversations with his fellow citizens. In ancient Greek, dia means through. The word for two is duo. The second part of the word dialogue, logos, means word, reason, sense, thought, language, principle, inner order, logic. A dialogue is, letting the understanding of a phenomenon happen through an exchange of words, reasoning, thinking. This exchange and change of words and reasoning is, in the case of Socrates, sometimes with one other person, but mostly with more persons involved. As we know - and also Stoic philosophers like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius knew it -, a dialogue can also be an inner dialogue. 1)! Philosophical practice as a dialogical encounter For Augustin (354-430) and Master Eckhart (± 1260 - April 30, 1328), the inner dialogue was a dialogue with God. So, in a dialogue we investigate our words, i.e., our ideas, opinions, judgments, imaginations, etc., to overcome our biased beliefs of the world, of this issue, of this situation. And at the end, as Plato underlined, we don t find the True Words about the world, but, if we are lucky, we have some insight into our situation. The sensation of aporia, of not knowing any more what to say, might be a sensation of insight and understanding beyond words. In circles of philosophical practice, the word dialogue is used to indicate different forms of conversation. Not always the word is used as I sketched it just now. As I will show you further on in this essay, we find conversations in philosophical practice that are not dialogical. (2)! Encounter With the word encounter it is like with the word dialogue ; it has many different uses. 18
In the philosophical traditions that are my roots, encounter is one of the main ideas of philosophy. I mean, in Socrates dialogical encounters, in phenomenological and existential philosophy, in the philosophies of Buber (Buber 1983) and Levinas, and in what I call Wittgenstein s situated philosophy (De Haas 2011a). The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre has tried to describe human encounters in his L Être et le Néant ( Being and Nothingness, 1943). The others are already given in my pre-conscious awareness of a situation. Being present is being with the others, both as a subject and an object; As these words subject and object are used in Hegel s dialectical philosophy. in the given situation, we are subject and object for ourselves and for each other. So is the nature of our encounters, which are thus dialectical, i.e., developing and realizing in such interactions of objectification and subjectification - making oneself and the other a thing on the one hand, and being oneself on the other. This is for instance what happens when human eyes meet in an encounter. Emmanuel Levinas has described and analyzed the encountering the other human being s face (Levinas 1980). Seeing the other into the eyes, I encounter another human being, impossible to treat him or her as a thing, as an object. I enter an irreducible being. The encounter is open, not biased, and full of respect and astonishment. Only when I refuse to really look into these living eyes, i.e., when I am, in Sartre s words, in bad faith, only then I can deal with this other person as an object. And doing so, I deal with myself as an object. So, in this young philosophical tradition, philosophy is the practice of encountering other people in this not-reduced, notreducing, open sense. Later on, I will show how some colleagues in philosophical practice have different kinds of encounters in mind. (3) Dialogical encounters in philosophical practice a. To be clear and transparent about the nature of my encounters with the guests in my practice, and about the frame of reference from which I perceive other philosophical practices, I will give you insight into these encounters. I will describe, first, some encounters I had with a woman of about 60 years old. 19
b. The first time, I visited her at her home. Her house was a mess, like her story was a mess. She was restless, moved a lot, spoke very fast. She told me about her live by herself; I didn t have to stimulate her. She recalled various events from childhood till these days. For some months, she was sick, and had sick leave. The reason was, as she told, that she was suffering from severe overstrain; at home she was submerged into too many problems, like the alcoholism of herself and her husband; huge financial debts that they couldn t pay off; a way too big house that she couldn t maintain; sleepless nights and, because of that, wearisome fatigue, together with her unstoppable urge to be active. She told, that she had a long history of psychiatry and psychotherapy. She recalled a psychotic situation she experienced when she was in her twenties. She told me a detailed story of this psychosis. She lost herself, but found her way out of the psychotic situation all by herself. That is to say, in that situation there was some young man who respected her and took care of her, which gave her the trust to come back in the world again. I listened to her, to what she told, her experiences, the situations she had lived. Sometimes, she labeled herself with words like psychotic, borderline, ADHD, and the like. I did not react to this labeling, nor to her psychosis story. I did not react with fright, nor with disgust, or fear. Neither did I discuss her labeling. I just listened and asked questions to know more about her live experiences. I can say my presence was interested, curious, concerned, involved. Of course, thoughts and feelings happened, but they did not occupy my attention in this situation. Thanks to this wonderful human power of empathy and concern, it happened that I sympathized with her live experiences she told me. And thanks to this other wonderful human power of unconditional, selfless attention, it happened that I gave my attention to her, without restraint and without any interest. c. At this moment in my recollection, I can state, that these two wonderful human powers of empathy and unselfish attention are exactly the powers philosophy has discovered and elevated. Thanks to these human powers and to my philosophical and personal education, I could be present with and for this woman, who so urgently needed a fellow human being to affirm her 20
- not affirm her bad habits, but the person she was. She said, that she appreciated my nonjudging presence. It was a relief to her to encounter someone who did listen to her, without judging and labeling her. After all those psychologists and psychotherapists, this was the first time she had the feeling to encounter someone who accepted her as she was. All the more so, because her husband has got entangled in his own personal problems and self-pity, at least in her perception of his situation. d. I visited her, so I was her guest. But during our dialogue, the situation changed, and she became my guest. What happened? I would say, the atmosphere changed. Thanks to my empathic, sympathetic, and selfless-attentive presence, she experienced relief and trust. Just by neglecting her self-labeling with psychodiagnostic jargon, I gave her - so to say - mental elbowroom, in which she felt accepted. e. In this free space of accepting attention and selfless sympathy, i.e., in this actual philosophical situation that was our encounter, her stories created an imaginary but very real situation of re-called and relived experiences. So, we have two situations now; the actual and physical situation of these two people in this messy living room, and the mental situation of her stories, the experiences she told and I heard (*). Her mental situation and mine were probably not the same, but we shared the point of reference, i.e., the situations and experiences she told about. (*) Anders Lindseth, too, has awareness of the distinction and value of these two situations, that he calls places ( Ort in German). Lindseth 2010. It is the empathy, sympathy, and selfless attention, in this actual, physical situation - in this actual encounter - that makes it possible for me to imagine myself in the situations and experiences she is telling about. Cf. Arthur Schopenhauer s idea of compassion. Schopenhauer 2006. And thus, I share these situations and experiences. It is exactly this sharing, that puts me into the position to follow the movements of her feelings and thinking. Sharing her experiences, I can think with her. And while thinking with her, I can see the knots and hindrances in her thinking. 21
These knots and hindrances are not just words and sentences, they are knots in her feelings and behavior, i.e., knots in her presence, obstructing her to be present in her situation in a free way, in a relaxed balance, doing what she has to do from her own being. This needs some more explanation, but this is not the place to expatiate on this issue. See De Haas 2009. f. After this first encounter at her house, we met four more times. These encounters were walks in the woods. She went on telling her life story. To be able to project myself in her experiences and situations, I ask her to be specific about a situation, an event. And when it happens, I point questioning at the knots in her story, and ask her to untie them, to open up the situation. As she is hasty all the time, both in walking and in talking, I mitigate the pace, and slow down her story telling. Gradually, she lands at her balance point, she slows down, she becomes able to look at herself with love and acceptance, she is going to feel her power to live from within instead of from without (from the household, from her husband, from her work, etc.). g. To summarize the preceding; I welcome my guest in my place. In this place there are no labels, no diagnostics. Nor are there treatments or procedures in this place. This is a place of attention. In this place of attention my guest imagines her situations of experience. Listening to her stories, empathy and sympathy happen, and I imagine her situations of experience. My attention is in her situations. This presence in her situations of experience gives me the opportunity to follow her story and to follow her thinking. And while this is happening, I have the opportunity to establish a relation to her thoughts and thinking movements. And doing so, I see thinking and feeling knots in her experiences, and I suggest her to see them, too, and to untie them. Her seeing herself and freeing herself, works as getting mentally stronger, and getting more balance in the storms of life. At least, that is the experience of most of my guests. 22
2)! The patchwork landscape of philosophical practice (1) An overview of styles and attitudes in philosophical practice a. It is clear that in philosophical practice two or more people meet. We speak of an encounter. But not in all philosophical practices the encounter is an explicit part of the practice. That is, there are philosophical practitioners who occupy themselves only to the words of the guest, and there are those who are engaged in the encounter with the guest. Therefore, we can distinguish between dialogic encounters on the one hand, and primarily language-oriented dialogues on the other hand. Examples of the first are Gerd Achenbach and Anders Lindseth. Important, here, is the guest s personal experience (narrative view of the encounter), his or her uniqueness and the open attitude of the practitioner. Philosophically, this orientation in philosophical practice is rooted in phenomenology and in what we can call the encounter philosophy, e.g., Buber, Levinas and Sartre. Examples of the second orientation are Oscar Brenifier and a language-analytic approach as for instance Eite Veening s. Its roots can be found in formal logic, argumentation theory, and analytical philosophy. Another example of the mainly linguistically based orientation is the neo- Socratic dialogue facilitation in the tradition of Leonard Nelson. Here, the group dialogue is regulated by a strict procedure with explicit rule maintenance. In addition to these two orientations - the dialogic encounter and the linguistically oriented conversation - there are many examples that are difficult to assign to one of these two orientations. This counts for conversations and group discussions, which are conducted mainly by an idea of the practitioner, as e.g. the idea of perspective, or the idea of the self, etc. In its relation to the history of philosophy this orientation is generally characterized by eclecticism. b. One of the characteristics of the philosophical practice movement is its diversity. In principle, each practitioner wants to invent his or her own way of philosophical practice (style, method, idea). Of course, there are inventors and pioneers, but usu- 23
ally these are not more than examples and sources of inspiration. Most practitioners intend to be an inventor themselves. So, when referring to the same example, they differ in the application - or at last, they claim to be different. This apparent need to differentiate complicates the wish to be professional, which is apparent as well. How can we decide that a specific practice is professional, when every practice claims to be unique, i.e., incomparable? What does the 10th ICPP teach us about the professional quality of the practices showed there? c. In the master classes and workshops at the 10th ICPP, a variety of practices was shown. In most cases, philosophical practice is a conversation, either between two persons, or between more persons in a group. Exceptions were an archery workshop, a meditation group, and a philosophical game. Philosophical practice, respectively practical philosophy, showed itself in all her forms: personal counseling, coaching and consultancy; working with groups; with different target groups (children, youngsters, adults); with private persons and organizations. The classical form of philosophical practice is the conversation between the practitioner and his client. From the outside it looks like an average consulting conversation. From the inside, the conversation is philosophical because of the questions and themes (the big questions of life, as Marinoff called it (Marinoff 2003), and because of the obviously philosophical interventions of the philosopher (a Socratic, or phenomenological, or linguistic, or logical, or other kind of philosophical questioning and researching). d. In short, the world of philosophical practices is a patchwork of partly vague, partly not reducible styles and methods. Largely, philosophical practice is a question of general (academic) education in philosophy, connected to personality and counseling competences (or talent). This is not to say, that there are no common features and resemblances between the practices. Those who share philosophical roots and disciplines, understand each other, and are capable of judging each other s interventions. But when the roots are not clear, and the discipline is not shared, judgment of the quality of a practice is very difficult, if not impossible. We 24